Submarine optical networks are deployed by cable owners or a consortia of operators to provide connectivity across stretches of ocean. The conventional operating model for submarine optical networks is to provide fixes bandwidth to end customers. Fixed bandwidth is a fixed amount, e.g. 10 Gb/s, etc. From a commercial standpoint, it is more advantageous for owners or the consortia to provide optical spectrum to users (as defined herein, users are typically service providers or the like who get bandwidth from the consortia). To provide spectrum, each user is given optical access, i.e. passive coupling, to a submarine optical system at a defined portion of the optical spectrum, and the user operates optical head-end equipment through the passive coupling in the defined portion. Since the optical spectrum is shared, changes made by one user affect other users on the same submarine optical system. Such an arrangement is possible between two users, where manual coordination is feasible and commercial agreements can be put in place for operations on the submarine optical system. However, if there are multiple users, this becomes increasingly challenging to manually coordinate and police for compliance. For example, if one user disconnects their traffic (removed optical power), the remaining users see an increase in launch power that could lead to enough propagation penalties causing the remaining users to see failures or errors. Also, there is no way, with the passive coupling, to ensure the users are honoring their agreement with respect to launch power, power spectral density, spectrum usage, and the like. Such challenges have to be automatically addressed for submarine optical networks to move towards optical spectrum as the end product instead of fixed bandwidth.